Heaven
by Project Alternity
Summary: This is the Heaven sub-storyline for Project Alternity. Heaven, the beautiful nightclub in the sky... you never know who's going to show up. Rated PG for themes and darkness.
1. Playing the Game

Alternity Interlude: Playing the Game  
by Slytherin Dragon  
  
  
*****Set up the game board  
  
  
From the outside, it looked bizarrely like a child's toy, a faceted silvery dome resting on an enchanted cloud. Made entirely of gleaming silvery metal and highly polished one way glass, the construct held itself far above the blackened city of London, high enough that only the birds and occasional broomstick penetrated above the dark clouds covering the city to see it.  
  
Far more saw the inside of the dome, which was ornately and luxuriously furnished, carpeted, and decorated to provide maximum comfort and aesthetic pleasure. The walls were windows, as was the ceiling; all surfaces except the floor looked out over an expanse of cloud cover as far as the eye could see. At sunrise and sunset, the view of the radiantly colored clouds was truly spectacular. In the middle of the transparent ceiling was a massive crystal chandelier, which, when lit at night, seemed to be the center of the night sky, with all the stars and constellations revolving around it.  
  
This was Heaven, London's most elite and popular nightclub. The only price of entry was that one arrived there, and there were only three ways to do so. The first was simply to Apparate there, and that was the most commonly used option. The next was to fly a broomstick up, and this option was only seldom used both because of the relative rarity of broomsticks under the Dark Lord Voldemort's rule, but also because flying that high tended to give the fliers nosebleeds. The third way was a secret way, known only to those coming and going from Heaven for purposes other than entertainment.  
  
Heaven didn't end at the cloud it rested on; underneath the main club was a veritable warren of apartments, tiny shops, even a small school where Heaven's employees (primarily Muggles and half-bloods) lived when they weren't working. The third way in was for them; a permanent gateway from these lower levels to a tiny, rundown building in the slums of London.   
  
This particular day, the view from Heaven's walls was dreary at best: cold, gray, and windy. Looking out one section of the windowed wall, the man responsible for Heaven's existence wondered vaguely if it was raining on the city below. A footstep sounded behind him, and he turned his head slightly to get a look at the person. "What do you think, my dear?" Gilderoy Lockhart asked lightly. "Shall we expect a larger crowd than usual due to this weather?"  
  
Penelope Clearwater, Heaven's majordomo, shook her head with a faint smile. Lockhart was the owner of the club, but she was its primary business mind. Lockhart attracted people and kept them coming, she made sure there was a place for them to come to every single time. "Normal crowd, Gilderoy. Weather doesn't matter to most of those poor people on the ground. They need whatever entertainment we can provide."  
  
Lockhart laughed and looked around the club at the smoothly working group of people. His employees, getting ready to open Heaven's gates, as it were. All were dressed in plain white robes and talked amiably amongst themselves. Many of them were Muggles or half-bloods whose lives would have been only terror and pain down on the surface. "So they do," Lockhart agreed. "So they do. Have our contacts reported anything new?"  
  
Penelope shrugged. "Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy's son Draco have been slapped on their collective wrist for that outburst with Macnair. As far as we can tell, they're doing a turn as prison guards at some internment camp or another."  
  
Lockhart wrinkled his nose. "How charming."  
  
"Isn't it. The resistance group to the north is still in operation-"  
  
"My my my. That must be some sort of record. Why hasn't his Lordship done something about them yet?"  
  
"They're too small. He's waiting until they're larger." Penelope shrugged and began serenely laying out silverware. "They'll make a better example that way. And in local news, Julian found a young man wandering the streets. He has brought the boy here, of course, and-"  
  
"Tested?"  
  
"Completely Muggle, Gilderoy. No magic at all. Julian thinks he survived one of his Lordship's cullings. As yet, the young man hasn't spoken, so we haven't been able to locate parents or relatives."  
  
"How very sad. I don't suppose he's displayed any talents, either?"  
  
Penelope smiled. "I saw this question coming. One of the first things he did on arrival was sit at a piano and start to play. He's not that bad, and he's a pretty enough boy to accompany Chrystal onstage."  
  
Lockhart nodded, then looked back out the window at the beginnings of another sunset. "Then that's taken care of." Neither mentioned the fate of their last pianist, who had simply disappeared one night a few months before and never returned. Consensus said that he was in an internment zone or worse for some unknown offense. Their singer had had to make do without accompaniment.  
  
The white-robed workers finished their preparations, and many disappeared to the lower levels to attend to other matters. Those that remained began guiding the appearing guests to tables or serving drinks. A golden-haired youth wearing a white robe a few sizes too big crept nervously up onto the stage, clutching sheet music. He sat at the piano and began to play a simple air. The evening had begun.  
  
*****Enter the players  
  
As usual, Lockhart's brilliantly colored robes stood out among his guests' somber blacks and grays as he fluttered around making light conversation. Penelope directed Heaven's servants as necessary, but for the most part engaged herself in a quiet discussion with serious (though perpetually nervous) Percy Weasley.  
  
Suddenly, a loud sound penetrated through the quiet music. All heads turned to look out the window in the direction the noise had come from. A large silvery shape, flying too quickly to be noticed as anything more than a blur, pierced the clouds. Then another silvery shape flew by. And another. Muggle "airplanes"... or missiles.  
  
Whispers buzzed around the room. "...another air strike... what're the Muggles hitting this time... the next one will hit us, I know it... well, might as well party at ground zero...."  
  
Lockhart walked nonchalantly up to the stage and silenced the blond pianist with a light hand on the shoulder. He had to act quickly before the frightened whispers became full-blown panic. He lifted his glass of white wine and smiled toothily around the room. "A toast!" he called, gesturing at the pierced clouds and silvery shapes with his free hand. "To the mechanical arm of the Muggle resistance and the shortness of its reach!" Charm was key, charm and acting unsurprised; let his patrons make their own decisions. He drained his glass in one gulp and set it on the piano, smiling around beatifically.  
  
The whispers changed tone drastically and immediately. "...must be hiding this place from them somehow... a force field... *I* heard he cut a deal with them... how's that possible...?"  
  
Lockhart laughed. "What does it matter, so long as the friends of Gilderoy Lockhart enjoy their sanctuary?" he asked. "Drink up! Tonight, you are in Heaven! Dance in the clouds...." He waved someone onto the stage, a beautiful girl with black hair and intensely violet eyes wearing a close-fitting green dress. Lockhart helped her up in a show of gallantry. "Dance to the songs of Chrystal!" He hopped off the stage to polite applause.  
  
The girl Chrystal smiled and curtsied, gesturing at the youth at the piano to begin playing, then said in her throaty alto, "Thank you... thank you. My first number's an old one you've all heard before..."  
  
Lockhart listened to her begin her song from beside the stage. Chrystal had been a rare find. Some years before, Lockhart had chanced to be visiting Lucius Malfoy's estate and had come across the lovely young Muggle, her beauty and talents completely wasted in menial work. He'd made a deal with Malfoy to secure her, and she had become his most popular stage act in short order. Lockhart still considered it one of the best deals he'd ever made, although rumor said Malfoy wasn't as pleased about it.   
  
He felt rather than saw Penelope come up beside him. "She's a lovely creature, isn't she, my dear?" he asked proudly.  
  
"In a Muggle sort of way," she responded, barely glancing at the stage. Her hands smoothed and resmoothed the front of her maroon robes nervously. "You... have a visitor, Gilderoy. It's... it's Lupin." Her voice dropped to a nervous whisper.  
  
"At the back table?" he asked calmly, still not looking away from the stage.  
  
"Yes." At his lack of reaction, Penelope's voice regained some of its customary briskness. "Be careful, Gilderoy. After... after our last pianist... Heaven can't afford scandal."  
  
"I know, my dear, I know. And of course I shall be as careful and discreet as I can. This is me, after all. The absolute soul of discretion." He flashed a grin at her. "Now, my dear, why don't you go back to your young man?"  
  
She sighed, but turned and went back to her conversation. Lockhart made his way through the mass of tables to one half shadowed and came face-to-face with a man he hadn't seen in years. "Remus, Remus, Remus," he said, pasting a falsely bright smile on his face. "What brings you to my little establishment this fine evening? It's so rare I get to converse with old colleagues, you know." He took a seat across from the worn-looking man. "Tell me, how *are* you?"  
  
Lupin smiled grimly, ignoring the chatter. "It's interesting," he said coolly, "to find someone who 'dedicated his life to the eradication of Dark forces' running an elitist nightclub in the middle of London and currying favor with Dark wizards."  
  
Lockhart beamed impartially. "What a thing to say! I know that if you just gave Heaven a chance, you'd absolutely adore it. But enough of this pointless arguing, where are my manners? Let me get you a drink-" He waved over one of his workers, who brought a glass of white wine, then looked inquiringly at Lupin.  
  
The worker was probably about ten years old, Lupin thought with a slightly sick feeling. Old enough to be serving hard labor in some of the camps, but he doubted that working in nightclub with more than a slight bent towards hedonism was any better. He waved dismissively, and the boy bowed and glided off to serve another table. "I'm here on business, Gilderoy," he said flatly.  
  
Lockhart's smile looked rather sick. "Business?" he asked in as innocent a tone as he could manage. "What kind? Do tell me you're not still running around doing that *terribly* dangerous monster hunting!"  
  
Lupin lowered his voice, glanced around a little before answering. "Resistance business, Gilderoy. You could be a big help to us, you know... you have contacts, resources...."  
  
Lockhart waved a hand in an elaborate gesture. "Of course, of course. I quite understand that your little rebellion would benefit greatly from someone of my expertise and experience. Under normal circumstances, I'd join up in a heartbeat, you know I would. However...." He affected a sad expression. "There are my people here to think of. And Heaven itself needs my guiding hand on the tiller, so to speak. Completely fall apart without me, don't you know-"  
  
"There's Heaven to run to and hide in, you mean!" Lupin flared. "Do you really think that just because you can't see what's happening on the ground, what Voldemort's doing, it has nothing to do with you, Gilderoy?"  
  
Lockhart flinched at the Name, then said, "It *doesn't* have anything to do with me. I'm a legitimate businessman, Remus. I can't be a front man for terrorists, no matter what the cause."  
  
Lupin leaned forward, whispering urgently. "You won't be. All we want from you is information. We want you to get friendly with the Dark Lord's inner circle, learn their secrets, their plans, anything they'll tell you. Then, tell us what you learn."  
  
Lockhart shook his head. "No, no, no. That simply won't work, I'm afraid. I do converse with my guests, you know, but it would be exceedingly bad for business were I known to pry-"  
  
Lupin sighed. "I didn't want to put things on these terms, Gilderoy," he said sorrowfully, "but I don't see that I have a choice. The Resistance needs you too much. If you don't choose to join us, we have to consider you an enemy, and Heaven is too high-profile a target to pass up. You exist solely on your grovelling to the Dark Lord and your worth to us. Take away that worth, and...." Lupin trailed off with a descriptive shrug. He hated using those strong-arm tactics on anyone, especially a coward like Lockhart; it seemed more like Sirius's style than his.  
  
Lockhart paled, the toothy smile finally disappearing completely from his handsome face. "I'm not... what you think I am," he said lamely after a moment.  
  
"No one is," Lupin agreed with a wry smile. "That's the way of things. I'll come back tomorrow evening, Gilderoy. Tie up loose ends, and be ready with your final answer then."  
  
Lockhart fixed his toothy smile back on his face. "So that's a no to a drink, then," he said as Lupin Apparated out. Once he was alone at the table, he let himself shiver slightly. That would be a problem... he didn't want to risk the Dark Lord's wrath, people who did that had a tendency to disappear without a trace. And yet the option seemed to be to disappear by the not-so-merciful hand of the Resistance. He laughed, bitterly and a little nervously, and lifted his glass in a mock-toast. "To rocks and extremely hard places!"  
  
"I'll drink to that," said a smooth, cold voice from behind him.   
  
Lockhart whirled to face Lucius Malfoy, and laughed nervously. "My lord... I didn't see you there-"  
  
"I know, Lockhart." Malfoy's voice was calm... too calm. "You weren't meant to. And now I find myself in something of a predicament."  
  
"You... do?" With some difficulty, Lockhart quelled the urge to simply cower and beg for mercy. There was no telling how much or how little Malfoy had heard. I've done this before, he told himself bracingly, this is no different than claiming to have vanquished those monsters, no different at all. His life and those of his workers depended on how well he could play the game and win.  
  
"Yes. I should, by the Master's law, close you down and perhaps execute everyone present for consorting with known traitors," the pale wizard said in a considering tone, "such as that Remus Lupin who just left."  
  
Lockhart smiled sickly. "You heard, didn't you?" he asked, taking care to put enough pleading in his tone for it to be submissive but not whining. Malfoy hated whining.... "I refused to spy for him-"  
  
"You did, Lockhart, and that's why you're still breathing." He slid into the seat Lupin had just vacated across from Lockhart. "However... I see an opportunity here not to be wasted."  
  
"You do, my lord?" Lockhart leaned forward. Be ingenuous, he told himself, be eager to please.   
  
"Yes. When he comes back... tomorrow, as he said... agree to his demands. Agree to give the Resistance information."  
  
"What?" Lockhart almost shrieked, recoiling. "No! I won't-"  
  
Malfoy cut him off with a glare and a sharp gesture. "Your loyalty does you... credit," he hissed grudgingly, "although one could wish you had two brain cells to rub together. You will agree, but you will tell him only what I wish you to tell him."  
  
"But, my lord, the penalty for treason-"  
  
"Does not apply. You will be a double agent, my spy among them. I will turn a blind eye to the Resistance's comings and goings here, as well as making sure others do the same, and in return you will tell me everything you find out about the Resistance."  
  
Everything took on a surreal quality. The exact same offer, from both sides! Protection from agression, in exchange for information! Refuse Malfoy, and he was dead. Agree to Lupin, but have it get out through misinformation or other methods that he was also working for Malfoy, and he was dead. Refuse both, and he was dead. The only chance, the only possible way to keep his skin and his club, was to agree to both and play both ends against the middle as long as he could. Lockhart nodded. "I accept, my lord, and thank you-"  
  
"Spare me. I will expect reports in a timely fashion, Lockhart. Give me outdated information and I will have your hide nailed to the front gate of Azkaban before you can blink." Malfoy Apparated out.  
  
Lockhart, once he was sure Malfoy had really gone, collapsed into his chair and finished his drink. Penelope and Percy, hand in hand, walked over after a moment. Percy, looking more anxious than usual, asked, "Are you all right, sir?"  
  
Lockhart forced a smile onto his face. No one must know of either deal. The more people in on a secret, the harder it was to keep. "Fine, dear boy, absolutely fine. Why do you ask?"  
  
Percy essayed a hesitant smile. He acted more often than not as a sort of personal secretary to Lucius Malfoy and others on Voldemort's governing council, as well as performing as a courier occasionally. He was also the only member of his family not only not considered a traitor, but working for the government. "Lord Lucius can be something of a-"  
  
"Monster," Penelope finished briskly. "We're surprised you've still got your skin on, Gilderoy."   
  
Percy made half-hearted shushing gestures at her. "Penny, please, he's my *boss*..."  
  
"My dear children, there have been times where this skin threatened to crawl right off my body utterly under its own power, and this was not one of those times," Lockhart said breezily. "Why, when I defeated the Wagga Wagga Werewolf, I couldn't look out the window at night for weeks. Lucius Malfoy doesn't possibly compare."  
  
Percy blinked, while Penelope just smiled indulgently. She took firm hold of her companion's elbow and began dragging him off. "Well, we were worried, that's all."  
  
Lockhart waited until they were both once again involved in their discussion, then looked out over the clouds at the starry night sky. "Yes,' he agreed softly. "So was I."  
  
*****Opening moves  
  
The next evening, as promised, Lupin returned. "So what's it to be, Gilderoy?" he asked. "Are you with us or against us?"  
  
"Remus, dear friend, you should have gone into politics. You've left me very little choice, you see." Lockhart shrugged. "I'm with you, of course. But I do ask that my involvement be extremely low-key. I've no wish to be Apparated out in the middle of the night, never to be seen again."  
  
"That happens often?" Lupin sounded curious.   
  
I've got a fish on the line, Lockhart thought gaily. "Oh, yes, all the time." He smiled internally. And now to reel in his catch. "I've been lacking a pianist for the past two months because of those nuisancy secret police. Only yesterday did I get a halfway decent replacement." He nodded at the stage, where Chrystal was singing and the golden-haired youth was playing the piano. "Dear boy doesn't speak, unfortunately. We think his parents either tried to escape whatever situation they were in, or they were part of one of his Lordship's cullings." He laughed faintly. "A few of the other workers have taken to calling him Angel, or some such like that... I suppose they believe that if this is Heaven, it ought to have at least one angel, and who better than one who won't protest the title?" He glanced sidelong at Lupin. "So what do you want to know?"  
  
"These secret police... what do you know about them?"  
  
"Oh, next to nothing. They're secret, you see," Lockhart lied. He had as much information on the secret police as it was possible for someone to have who wasn't the Dark Lord. But if he gave away what he knew too quickly... well, no one trusted free information. It was better to dole it out slowly. "So what kind of organization have I gotten myself into, Remus? I need to know, you see, so I can give you the information that will be the most useful and waste the least time."  
  
Lupin frowned for a moment. "Can I trust you, Gilderoy?"  
  
Lockhart smiled brightly. Gotcha. "If not me, then who, dear friend? I signed on to protect my way of life, don't you know. I'm not about to throw it away. You've got me, Remus, and I can't get away."  
  
After a short silence, the tired-looking wizard nodded sharply. "All right. We're not very organized right now. We used to be, but there's enough infighting..."   
  
He continued for some time, detailing the Resistance's situation. Lockhart smiled and nodded, taking it all in and filing it away under two mental files: 'give to Malfoy' and 'don't even think about it'. When he'd finished, Lupin stood up. "That's all you need to know," he said. "I'm not sure I should even have told you as much as I did."  
  
"Oh, pish. Eventually you'll be happy you did." I know I am, Lockhart added mentally. "And Remus. About the secret police? I'll try and find something to tell you when you visit next."  
  
"Don't focus on it," Lupin warned. "We want everything."  
  
"Of course, of course." Lockhart kept the smile on his face until after Lupin had Apparated out of Heaven. Then, his expression arranged itself into unfamiliar seriousness. His opening moves in the game were done. He'd given Lupin a shred of information the man undoubtedly knew already, and received in exchange a little information to play with and give to Malfoy, who had thoughtfully (not) scheduled his own appointments with Lockhart for the day after whenever a Resistance operative "dropped by". Now the real game began.  
  
*****Play the game  
  
"What do you have?" Malfoy asked icily the next day. "And don't tell me nothing, Lockhart. I expect fast results-"  
  
"You have them, my lord," Lockhart promised. "I have the Resistance's complete trust. They think they're holding Heaven over me like an axe about to drop. I don't have *much*, it's true, but... would their organization and structure be of any interest to you?"   
  
Malfoy leaned forward. "Talk."  
  
Lockhart smiled. Mix one part truth to two parts lie, stir well, and serve. "They're actually quite organized, to hear Lupin tell it, my lord. They scatter themselves in small groups so it doesn't seem as though they're actually one big group and to discourage being targeted for destruction by his Lordship. They've been coordinating their attacks and planning very carefully-"  
  
"I know all that," Malfoy interrupted impatiently. "Something new."  
  
"The group operating ten miles to the north is a key group," Lockhart said, making up something on the spot. Any Resistance cell worth its salt would know how to scatter and reform elsewhere in about nothing flat, so he had no problems sending one to the mill. "I believe that they're planning a mass escape from camp 22." Better and better. Not only was camp 22 where Malfoy's son was at present, it had also actually *had* an escape in the past twenty-four hours. "They've been testing defenses. Lupin said that they were going to do a practice run, effect one escape... my lord? Are you listening?"  
  
Malfoy had stiffened in shock. Now he relaxed and glared frostbite at Lockhart. "Intently," he snapped.   
  
"That's about all, my lord. Rumors, of course, and it's possible he was merely testing me to see if I was a reliable source." A little doubt always added to the believability of any statement, true or false.  
  
"Of course." Malfoy rose. "I will be expecting your next report, Lockhart. Try and have something a little more substantial next time."  
  
"Yes, my lord," Lockhart said meekly to the now-empty space. "I hate it when people do that: Apparate out in the middle of a conversation," he complained to no one in particular.   
  
He walked over to a window and looked out at the bleak grayness, suddenly depressed. This wasn't like his other games... this time if he zigged instead of zagged or said the wrong thing at the wrong time, he and everything he had made would be destroyed. "I don't do well under pressure," he told his reflection. "I crack. You know that...."  
  
The piano music filtered into his ears from the direction of the stage. A bright, cheerful tune, with Chrystal singing her heart out right along with it. People, some little more than children, in white robes, carrying trays or drinks. Patrons in dark colors smiling and laughing, a few dancing. Enjoying themselves. Lockhart felt his dark mood lift as he listened and watched. Heaven was exactly that: a slice of joy (or at least happiness) for people who had nearly forgotten what that was, and he aimed to keep it no matter what. He'd switch sides back and forth, tell truths and lies, to keep his dream alive as long as he could.  
  
Lockhart threw his head back and laughed, his brief (very brief) period of depression gone and done with. This was how the game was supposed to be played! No blood, no violence, plenty of intrigue, the sky's the limit, winner take all.   
  
A light footstep sounded behind him. He turned his head slightly to get a glimpse of the person and beamed. "It's going to be a lovely sunset, Penelope, my dear. Did I ever tell you about the time I trapped a ghoul in a tea-strainer...?"  
  
The sky's the limit, winner take all.  
  
  
  
~finis~  
  
  
  



	2. Angelic Overture

Alternity Heaven: Angelic Overture  
by Slytherin Dragon  
  
  
The house on Privet Drive looked like all the others on the street: run-down, shabby, and overcrowded. Dudley Dursley thought sometimes he could remember a time when the house had only had him and his parents in it, but probably that was only a fantasy. The truth of the matter was that the house was one of the few that barely leaked at all when it rained, and the more people there were in a house, the warmer it was in the winters.  
  
The blond five-year-old kicked at a piece of broken pavement absently. Mum and Dad were already gone, of course, doing their work. Or whatever it was that grownups did during the day; Dusley found himself not all that interested in the matter. He himself was supposed to be on his way to the Place.  
  
That was what it was called. Children who were too young to work and too old to need their mother's care went there for the day, so they wouldn't "run wild" or cause other trouble. All Muggle children within walking distance (and anything within two towns was considered walking distance) who had been deemed too young, or too sick, or too crazy to work with the grownups went to a big building that had been a school or something once, where they were "looked after" by witches and wizards deemed too old and infirm for much else than looking after Muggle toddlers and invalids.  
  
If Dudley had been older, he would have appreciated the logic of the arrangement. The "useless" of both wizard and Muggle society had a place to be, and, in the case of the elderly witches and wizards, a purpose. As it was, he was a little frightened of his first day at the Place. The older children in the house had told him about the Place and what went on there; while he was sure they were purposely trying to scare him, a few of the stories had rattled even his stoic five-year-old fearlessness.  
  
He sighed and walked faster. The faster he got there, the faster he'd be home with Mum and Dad and all the others again, he told himself firmly. While he walked, he inspected the pockets of his ratty coat to make sure nothing had taken up residence in there since the last time he'd looked.  
  
Noise from ahead made him look up and shove his hands in the coat pockets. It didn't do to look distracted. He was one of the youngest in the house, he knew how things worked there, and they probably worked the same in the Place. If he didn't pay attention to what was happening around him, he ended up either being beaten up or locked in a closet by the older, bigger kids. If he was lucky. The best way to get by without contusions or claustrophobia wass to look attentive and eager to please, so that was what Dudley did.  
  
The Place loomed in front of him, a huge stone building that positively teemed with children ranging in age from about Dudley's own five to possibly a few very scrawny, sickly fifteens. In reality, the crowd of kids wasn't confined to only the Place proper; they spilled over into nearby buildings and across the ruined street as well. In some areas, it more closely resembled a demilitarized zone than a "day care", with groups of kids facing each other across silently agreed-upon lines of territory, posing and snarling at each other.  
  
With an effort not to look out of place (the older kids had told him that "newbies" got the brunt of the bullying), Dudley progessed into the Place itself. It was quieter, not so crowded as the streets and buildings surrounding it. Very few children were in evidence there, and those that were sat quietly and talked amongst themselves or curled up in corners and slept.  
  
An old woman approached Dudley. She had a friendly-looking face, wore dark purple robes, and had an ancient wand stuck in her belt. Dudley recognized her immediately as a witch and therefore as his better, and bowed nervously. She laughed a thin old lady's laugh, then bent down and pinched his cheek. "Oh, no need to bow to old Louisa, duck. What's your name, then?"  
  
"Dudley Dursley, ma'am," he replied shakily, bearing the pinching with good grace. "It's my first day."  
  
"Why, so it is, duck, so it is," Louisa told him, smiling. "So you're the one we're supposed to look out for." She looked him up and down, taking in the unevenly cropped golden hair nearly brown with dirt, the smudged face, the large blue eyes. "I can't say you're particularly impressive, but your family history being what it is...." She shrugged.   
  
Dudley blinked. "Family?" he asked blankly. "I've got Mum. And Dad. And the others at the house, but I don't think they're family, right?"  
  
"Not really, no." Louisa peered at him again. "You don't know, do you." She shook her head and waved a hand dismissively. "Well, you're really too young for testing yet, aren't you? Go find something to occupy yourself for the day, dear." With that, the old witch tottered off to join a group of other oldsters.  
  
Dudley blinked. It wasn't what he'd been expecting, certainly not from a witch. He looked around obediently. The group of oldsters huddled together by one wall, chattering amongst themselves, by and large ignoring their charges. There was very little furniture, and the few kids that were present huddled in groups against the cold, imitating the oldsters as best they could. Nothing looked interesting in this room, but the Place had lots of rooms for him to look into and around, so he left the main room with the oldsters.  
  
The first few other rooms he came to were empty, with old chairs and tables scattered around. Broken windows let dead leaves and dust blow in on the wind and collect in piles on the floor. Dudley shivered and wrapped his shabby coat closer around him. Too cold, too empty, too boring.  
  
A few rooms were occupied by groups of kids; some of them had built fires, and others looked like the groups outside, huddling together and glaring across hallways and out windows. Dudley stayed away from those rooms, although it was cold enough that the fires would have been welcome. Dudley knew from rough experience at the house that older kids were very possessive of their places, and if he didn't want black eyes or worse, he'd keep away and leave them alone.  
  
There was one room that didn't have any windows in it, so it was slightly warmer than the first ones had been. No gang and no kids with fire, so colder than *those* rooms, but that much safer, too. It was also much darker... in fact there wasn't any light at all. Dudley stretched out a hand in front of him to feel his way around.  
  
It didn't help. He crashed right into a large, boxy thing and fell backwards onto his rear. The thing twanged discordantly, protesting his clumsiness. Dudley scrambled backwards a few feet, then stopped when he realized that his head hurt from running into that thing, and if he smacked into a wall it wasn't going to make him feel any better. "I hope that thing's not alive," he said out loud, "Or mad, or something."  
  
A voice laughed somewhere in the room. "Um...hello?" Dudley hated how his voice sounded, all thin and scared in the dark.  
  
"Hello to you," an elderly voice cackled. "A wanderer, I see. And young." Another laugh.  
  
"Who... who are you?" Dudley asked, getting to his feet. A little more boldly (if he couldn't see who was talking, they couldn't see him either!) he added, "Show yourself!"  
  
"And brave." A light flared, and by it Dudley could make out a hunched over figure shuffling around. It lit a few candles and the room stood out in flickering pools of golden light. The boxy thing that Dudley had run into sat towards one end of the room, with chairs arranged on the other as if the boxy thing was holding court. A few of the candles were spaced on top of it so that their light shone across a sort of ledge, with tabs alternating small black wedges and bigger white wedges, across the entire length of the box. Dudley had never seen such a thing before, never in his life.   
  
The hunched over figure who'd lit the candles was actually a little old man who grinned like a nearly-toothless maniac in the candlelight, in very shabby green robes, with an equally shabby wand shoved in his belt. "Emil. I'm Emil. And you would be...?"  
  
"Dudley." He didn't bother with a last name; after all, 'Emil' hadn't. He pointed at the boxy thing, absently rubbing his head with the other hand. "What's *that*?"  
  
"Hurt your little head, didn't it, when you ran into her?" cackled Emil. "That, dear boy, is my darling Antoinette."  
  
"Ant-wan-ett." Dudley wrinkled his nose, sounding out the name. "What's an ant-wan-ett?"  
  
"Antoinette is her name," Emil said rapturously, running his hands across the black and white wedges, causing the boxy thing to make very different sounds than it had when Dudley had run into it. Nice sounds. "Antoinette is a piano, boy. Hasn't anyone taught you anything?"  
  
Dudley crept closer, blinking at the boxy Antoinette. I don't think she bites, he decided, although I'll keep my hands away for now, just in case. "I know stuff!" he protested. "Just not *this* stuff."  
  
Emil cackled. "Come here. I'll show you." The little old man sat on a bench in front of the piano and backoned to Dudley, who shrugged after a minute and climbed up beside him. Emil took hold of Dudley's hand and pressed the fingers against a few of the wedges in a pattern. "Hear that, boy? She's singing to you."  
  
Music... a lullaby Mum sometimes sang to him... Dudley snatched his hand back and stared at the old man in awe. After a moment, he carefully repeated the motions on his own and played the lullaby again. "A piano," he repeated, enchanted. "What else does she do?"  
  
"That's it. A piano plays music. And Antoinette better than most, these days, because I take very good care of her, I do." Emil preened slightly.  
  
"Just lullabies? That's silly."  
  
"Not just lullabies. Any music." Emil shook his head. "Time was when everyone knew what a piano was meant for. Now, it's something you know if you're lucky. Times change, boy, times change." He cocked his head to one side thoughfully, then asked, "Would you like to learn?"  
  
"Learn?" Dudley asked. "Learn to play this?" He nodded enthusiastically without waiting for a verification. "I'd like that very much!"  
  
Emil cackled. "Well, then, boy, let's get started..."  
  
*****  
  
Lessons, between actual learning and endless practicing, ended up taking up most of Dudley's four years at the Place. The rest of the time was spent in the necessary activity of learning how things worked at the Place and how not to get beaten up.  
  
All the kids, no matter their age, were expected to have a gang affiliation. If they didn't, they were fair game for anyone looking for a fight. Most gangs were lucky to have five or six members, a very few had more than that. They all had fanciful, poetic sounding names for their gangs, too. The Bad Moon gang was the largest, with nearly twenty kids, closely   
followed by the Ash Raven gang in size.  
  
There was a whole political structure to the gang system, Dudley found. The gangs outside of the Place were to be avoided at all times, while the ones who'd made their turf from old classrooms could usually be dealt with reasonably. By the time he'd been learning from Emil for nearly a month, Dudley found himself loosely affiliated with one of the nearby classroom groups, a gang who took to calling themselves the Celestial Chorus after Dudley joined and the piano-room was added to their turf.  
  
If things had been different, he sometimes thought he could lead at least the nearest gang. But he was still the youngest at the house, and as such he pretty much got what the older kids were willing to give him of anything, so he was never as strong as them. It was fine with him, though; he was used to deferring, and he found as he grew older that the more helpless someone thought you were, the more they tended to think you weren't really worth the attention. Unless they were sadistic, of course, and in that case, all bets were off.  
  
The gang Dudley found himself "with" was one of the better ones. The leader was big ond not too bright, but he wasn't sadistic or mean for the sheer joy of pounding smaller kids into the ground. Mostly, the gang left him alone and he left them alone, but to an 'outsider' he was one of them and not to be messed with. In return, the gang got to claim the music room as their turf in addition to their own room. Occasionally one or two of them would even hang out in the music room while Dudley played.  
  
The years passed quickly enough. For the most part, Dudley learned hymns and slow pieces, as those were easy to memorize and very pretty to listen to. But every so often, as a 'treat', Emil brought out a piece of complex music, real classical music, for Dudley to learn, memorize, and play.  
  
Dudley would never have left the music room during the days if he'd had a choice in the matter. But Emil insisted that he not only learn how to play the piano, but understand the music as well, so every so often, Dudley would have to leave the room to find paper or a pencil or some other set of writing tools. When he was five, the hunts could take all day, but at age nine, Dudley was so used to the Place and the way things worked that he was able to get enough supplies to last a week in the space of about ten minutes.   
  
He'd just returned from one such trip to find Emil dozing in a corner and one of the Choristers, a weaselly-looking boy who called himself Piers, sitting crosslegged on the floor sharpening a knife. "Hello, Piers," Dudley said, shoving a lock of golden hair behind one ear, resigned to spending a day ignoring snide remarks from the floor. "What's the matter, you have another fight with Marshall?"   
  
Marshall was the leader of the Celestial Chorus, as the biggest, the one with the sharpest knife, and the one with the most space in his brain to devote to leadership. Piers snorted. "Shows what you know, Goldilocks. It's the big day, someone come down from London for it an' everything. An' so what if I had a fight with Marshall? He's not gonna kill me. Needs all the help he can get. 'S why he lets you hang around, innit?"  
  
Dudley sat at the piano and played an arpeggio that sounded faintly derisive, showing precisely what he thought of the gang's political state. Piers missed the meaning, of course. "What big day?" Dudley asked absently.   
  
"You dope. It's the Day." Piers shuddered. "We're all going to be Tested, and if any of us're wizards, we'll get sent to the zones. The rest of us'll go to work like normal Muggles."  
  
Tested. Dudley frowned slightly, remembering the old woman Louisa's reference to testing from when he was little. And her reference to his family... "So the Place'll be pretty empty come tomorrow," he said, and shrugged.   
  
"Place'll be pretty empty," Piers mocked, putting on a worldly air. "Is that all you've got to say?"  
  
Dudley played a questioning little melody. He'd gotten into the habit (since he was at the piano all the time anyway) of playing his mood and thoughts as music instead of talking about them. Most of the time it was more fun than talking, anyway. Sometimes people understood what he meant, but usually they didn't.  
  
Piers didn't, so Dudley asked, "Neither of us're Testing age, so what else is there to say?"  
  
"Too young, 'zat what yer thinkin'? As if wizards're gonna come down from London whenever somebody turns twelve. No, we all get Tested at the same time, and if you paid attention to anything 'cept that box of yours, you'd know that."   
  
"Antoinette is a *piano*, not a box. How many times do I have to tell you lot that?" Dudley shook his head. "You call yourselves the Celestial Chorus, and none of you know anything about music!"  
  
Piers waved his arms dramatically, narrowly missing slicing off a piece of one ear with his knife. "Worry about yourself, Dursley! 'Place'll be pretty empty'? Ha! What about you? You'll lose your precious *Antoinette* and be stuck shining wizard shoes or somethin' for the rest o' yer pathetic life. Don't that mean anything to you?" Piers bit his lip and dropped his voice to a near-whisper. "I heard they kill people in those zones. Just bam! And you're dead."  
  
"Anything's possible."  
  
"Nobody cares."  
  
"I know." Dudley began playing a pavane he knew by heart; a slow, funereal piece to suit the gloomy atmosphere. "Why did you bring it up?"  
  
"We gotta go, and I mean now. Marshall's gonna have our heads for being late-"  
  
"I was getting paper for Emil." Dudley nodded in the direction of the sleeping wizard.  
  
"Yeah, whatever. Point is, we're probably all gonna get it because of you, Goldilocks, so come along and shut up."  
  
Dudley shrugged and got down from the piano. "You could have saved us both a lot of time by just telling me before you started complaining," he pointed out. "Sorry."  
  
"Yeah, whatever. Move it."  
  
They walked out of the music room, down the hallways towards the main room where the oldsters usually were. Neither spoke, each preferring to think private thoughts. Every so often, Dudley's fingers twitched as though he were playing something in his mind, and Piers kept switching his knife from hand to hand.  
  
The smell hit them first, a sort of sickly-sweet coppery smell. Neither knew what it was until they walked into the main room of the Place. Blood covered the floor and speckled the walls, and that was the source of the smell.  
  
Everyone, all the kids and the old witches and wizards, were lying on the ground, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Most of the bodies were just lumps of flesh with the bones shattered and poking out through their skin like bizarre pincushions. A few had simply had their throats slashed, or their wrists. It didn't really matter... they were all equally dead.  
  
Piers gaped, dropped his knife. He looked wildly all around him. "What... who... why...." he stammered faintly. "I don't... understand... this isn't the Testing...."  
  
Dudley didn't say anything, but walked around the room, carefully avoiding stepping on the bodies. Every few feet he stopped and bent down to close someone's eyes. Once he made it back to the front of the room, he collapsed next to Piers, not minding that he ended up sitting on his knees in a pool of someone's blood. Marshall's? Maybe.  
  
After a few moments of dumbstruck silence, Piers turned to look down at Dudley and said solemnly, "We really are all going to get it, aren't we? Look, most of us already have...." His eyes were wide and terrified. He looked around slowly, retrieved his knife. "Now, I'm gonna leave... going that way." He stabbed in a random direction. "You were the one who made us late. Maybe the killers won't chase me. So don't you follow me, Dursley, I'm warnin' you."  
  
Dudley shook his head and didn't get up. "So go. I'm not stopping you."  
  
With one last glance around the room, Piers fled. Dudley watched him disappear out the door, catching a quick glimpse of a similar scene to the one he was sitting in in front of the Place, except out there it was only kids, and they were put in more creative places. Lampposts, fences, sewer grates... Dudley forced himself to stop thinking about it.  
  
Suddenly, his head snapped up. The others, the ones not in this room... what about them? "Emil," he whispered. "I have to tell Emil to get away...." He leapt to his feet and tore down the hallways as fast as his legs would take him.   
  
Every room he knew to be home to a gang, he stopped in, and in every room there was that smell and the sight of broken, bleeding bodies to let him know he was too late. After about five of those rooms, Dudley closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it, but the smell was still there, and so was the awful silence.  
  
After what seemed like an eternity, Dudley reached the music room. It was a shambles. None of the candles were left burning, they had all been tipped over and drowned in their own wax. Antoinette the piano was lying in the center of the room, reduced to kindling that burned from the upset candles that had rested on top of her. "Emil?" he called softly, trying not to look at the bonfire that had been Antoinette.  
  
No answer, just silence and the smell creeping around the edges of Dudley's senses. He looked around carefully, and spotted a lump in a chair facing the conflagration in the center of the room. Dudley almost laughed. That's right, Emil had been taking a nap, that's why he hadn't answered. He walked over to where the old wizard was sitting and shook him lightly on the shoulder. "Emil, wake up. We have to leave. Everyone's dead... I think because Piers and I were late for the Testing... and Antoinette's burning, Emil. We have to leave...."  
  
The old man slumped out of the chair and fell heavily onto the ground. The smell assaulted Dudley's nose, and once Emil was on the ground it wasn't hard to see that he was dead. His head hung at a crazy angle to his body, and blood was leaking out a corner of his mouth.  
  
Dudley felt tears stinging his eyes and sliding down his face. He hadn't cried over the other bodies; they hadn't seemed real, somehow. But this was different, this was too real, it jumped out at him and lodged in his chest so he couldn't breathe properly. "Emil, no," he sobbed. "Please, you weren't finished teaching me yet...." He knelt down and shook the old man. Emil's head flopped uselessly. Dudley gave up and started crying in earnest.  
  
He wasn't used to crying, so he quit after a few minutes when he got a headache. "Why?" he demanded finally of the corpse next to him. "You were alive when I left the room with Piers! How did I miss the killer? We should have passed each other in the hallways...." He paused, then snuffled. "I'm sorry, Emil," he whispered. "I didn't mean... I didn't know... I...."  
  
Dudley bowed his head, feeling the tears start up again. "Why? We never hurt anybody here. Kids and old people... and you were a wizard, Emil! Why you and not me?" He drew in a shuddering breath and got to his feet. "I can't stick around," he said apologetically. "I don't want to die, and I think that if I stay here I will. So I guess I'm going back to the house now."  
  
He shifted his weight a few times, then took off out of the room at a dead run, shutting his eyes so he didn't have to see the corpses and doing his best to breathe through his mouth and thus avoid the smell. He ran all the way back to the house, not bothering to hide himself. If the killer was still around, then it probably wouldn't matter if Dudley were hiding or not.  
  
He stumbled into the house on Privet Drive gasping for breath. He wasn't used to running, and the distance between the Place and the house wasn't exactly short. "Mum?" he called hopefully. "Dad? Anybody?"  
  
Silence... Dudley sighed, then blinked and sniffed the air. Coppery, sickly-sweet. "Oh, no. No. Not here." He left the entry hall and went into the large main room, and there he found where the smell was coming from.  
  
It was the same as it had been at the Place; everyone who had lived in the house stared up at the ceiling with all their bones shattered or their throats cut... sometimes even both for no discernible reason. A few bodies were still sitting in chairs, as though they'd been called into the room for some reason and had simply been killed where they sat.   
  
The tears began to sting again, but Dudley began looking over all the bodies, looking fo rhis parents among them. If he couldn't find them, maybe they weren't there. Maybe they were still out doing their work, and that would be all right because these people weren't *family*, they weren't related to him, they were just people who lived there with his family because the house was one with a proper roof....  
  
No such luck. His mother, Petunia (also called Pet, but only when she wasn't listening) was one of the bodies in a chair, and his father Vernon was crumpled into a barely-recognizable heap behind it. "Mum," Dudley whispered. Piers's words from earlier ran through his head, jumbled and accusing. *We're all gonna get it because of you... look, most of us have... you made us late... I'm going this way....*  
  
Dudley fell to his knees beside the chair and laid his head in his mother's lap. "It's my fault," he whispered. "I made me and Piers late by talking, and now everybody's dead. I'm not dead, so it's my fault, right?"  
  
Suddenly, the body twitched underneath his head. "No," a voice rasped.  
  
Dudley's head jerked up. "Mum?!"  
  
"Yes, dear... for a little while, at least." It seemed hard for her to talk, and she had to stop every few words to cough. "Now listen... Dudley... not your fault...."  
  
"Then whose?" he demanded tearfully. "Whose?"  
  
Petunia started coughing harder, bringing blood onto her lips. "Lily...!" she gasped, staring blindly into space. "My... sister... one of *them*... I always... knew...." She coughed a few more times, then fell back and didn't cough anymore.  
  
Dudley shook his head, running fingers through his golden hair, never minding that his hands were leaving ugly scarlet streaks where they passed. It was too much. Everyone he knew, dead in less than an hour... and probably he would be too unless he took steps. He had to be quick and quiet... the quieter the better. If no one could hear him, maybe they'd believe he wasn't there.   
  
He sneaked up to the room he shared with several others, absently noticing that it didn't smell so bad up there... all his roommates were dead at the Place instead of the house. Dudley hunted down a bag belonging to one of the others; they were dead, after all, they didn't need it. Quickly, he shoved a few things into it. His other outfit and a comb with several teeth missing. A very old picture album of his mother as a girl that he'd uncovered in the attic once and kept because everyone looked so happy. A very shabby book and some of the sheet music Emil had had him copy down. He couldn't read, except for the music, but the book was close at hand, so in it went. A ratty scarf.  
  
Dudley considered that last, then quickly closed up the bag and wrapped the scarf around his head. It wouldn't fool anyone who was really looking for him, but it might fool someone who wasn't looking that hard. With that, he tossed the bag over his shoulder (immediately wishing he hadn't as the packing shifted and dug the comb into his shoulder blade) and returned to the main room.   
  
He gave his mother's body a clumsy hug goodbye. He would have said something, but he needed to be quiet if he wanted to make a serious bid at getting away, and that meant no talking. After a moment, he left the house, head down and hands in pockets.  
  
Dudley had no idea how long he walked. He only knew that he walked, and eventually the streets around him gave way to one street surrounded by barren nothing places. It was open, without anywhere to hide. Well, he didn't want to stop somewhere where he couldn't hide, so he kept walking.  
  
It kept on like that. Dudley walked and walked, only stopping when he had to for sleep. When he was hungry, he usually did his best to ignore it and wait until he came to a place that had other Muggles, so he could mix in and be inconspicuous. He kept to himself and kept quiet, speaking to no one even if they spoke to him first.   
  
Eventually, he reached a place where there were streets around him again, more than there had been back at the house or the Place. And more ruined... almost no buildings were left standing properly, the streets were torn up and needed to be carefully navigated to avoid tripping over rubble. Very few people were in evidence... a few girls wearing absurdly short skirts standing in groups on corners, a few boys and men wandering around looking dazed.   
  
Dudley shrugged slightly and adjusted the scarf around his face. It wasn't the house, and it wasn't the Place, and it wasn't the road, but there were places to hide there and some people to hide among, so that was all he really needed.  
  
He began walking the streets, trying to emulate the dazed look he saw on most faces to blend in better, looking for a place to sleep. There were any number of barren-looking buildings, but most of them showed signs of having been claimed by a street gang or the elements and was unsafe either way.  
  
In spite of his pickiness, it didn't take him long to find a place that would do for a few days, at least; a section of one building had fallen in and formed a sort of lean-to separated from the rest of it. Dudley curled up inside his coat and against one wall, and fell asleep.  
  
Life fell into an easy pattern at that point. Not to say that life was easy, but at least he always knew what he was doing and what was happening from one moment to the next. He only stayed in one shelter for two or three days maximum before moving on to another. Occasionally he found himself forced to stay in a place he'd been before, but as soon as he found a new place, he was out of there.   
  
He always remembered that he was running, although from who specifically he couldn't say. Or even if whoever it was had noticed a child's escape from the killing ground. If they even cared whether one had. By the time he reached the city, the habit of moving and hiding, never speaking, never making himself easy to find, was ingrained and automatic.  
  
Food was scarce. Mostly he scrounged what he could, resorting to the occasional housebreak when the pickings were thinner than usual. Begging was something he didn't allow himself to do; it required drawing attention to himself in a way that simple theft didn't.  
  
Dudley avoided the gangs as best he could. There were enough street rats without gangs that he wasn't remarked upon, but gangs tended to fight amongst themselves, and that brought official attention. Some gangs were worse than others, of course, but to Dudley's way of thinking they were all too dangerous for him.  
  
All in all, city life wasn't as bad as being dead. He spoke to no one, avoided people unless he wished to try and blend into a crowd, and in general kept himself to himself. The tactic worked for over six years, during which time he became rail-thin and as unkempt as any lifelong street rat.  
  
*****  
  
Julian, called Raguel and occasionally Rags, shoved his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose irritably. Something had been itching the back of his mind all day, and he couldn't pin down what it was. Not that there was any important gossip out on the streets that day, and it wasn't as though he hadn't had that sort of feeling before. It was just usually easier to get rid of.  
  
His mind hadn't started buzzing until he'd finished listening to the gossip from Knockturn Alley and what was left of Diagon Alley, regarding the trouble young Harry Potter had gotten himself into with Angus Macnair. If he'd been lower in the social ladder, he'd have been executed for what he'd done (knocking the glorified murderer across the room in a fit of pique), but since he was the Dark Lord's little boy, he got away with a slap on the wrist. When the name Harry Potter had first come up, his brain had started nagging, and it hadn't stopped.  
  
Julian had been a Seer, once, more talented than was strictly speaking good for him. His visions were so clear and immediate that they'd been driving him slowly insane. He even had visions while he slept, translated into murky nightmares and falling dreams. He was lucky he'd been with a street gang at the time, one that didn't mind dealing with his quirks and trances so long as he did his part. A freak accident during a raid on one of Lucius Malfoy's establishments had ended up in his capture by the Dark Lord's government, who had questioned him, forced him to reveal everything he knew, then blinded him and tossed him in the street.  
  
At that point, the only thing that saved him was his Sight, which was muted and altered by the fact that he couldn't actually see anymore. He could sense what was around him, close enough to sight to make little difference when walking. He knew where furniture was and where people were, even if he didn't know what any of it looked like. Furniture and other nonliving things he sensed as just solid blocks, somehow, but people... people were bundles of emotion and thought. Julian couldn't hear the thoughts except as a buzz punctuated with an occasional word most of the time, but the emotions came through clearly.   
  
The nightmares stayed, although they were less frequent and less intense. And from time to time, he got feelings when he needed to be somewhere or do something. Like he was now, with the itch in the back of his mind. And like he had back when he was first blinded, when the itch in his mind had guided him to the floating club called Heaven and its eccentric (some would say "idiotic") owner, Gilderoy Lockhart.  
  
Julian swung his head around, "looking" from side to side, for all the world as though he saw perfectly what was going on around him. The itch had direction, sort of... it lessened in the direction of the need and got worse when he tried to go another way. "Wretched visionary cattle prod," he muttered, starting off in the direction of least resistance, as it were. "I almost prefer having nightmares." He didn't, of course, it was just something to complain about.  
  
As always, the walk was uneventful. As Raguel, he was well-known enough on the streets to have more or less free passage wherever he went. Also, he had a couple of knives hidden up the sleeves of his coat that deterred anyone who*did* challenge his right of way. It was a shame he wasn't a better wizard; if he could handle more than simple charms and the occasional Apparation, he'd be a much more effective presence than he was.   
  
As things stood, he had to be happy with running a network of eyes-and-ears throughout London and a lesser network in surrounding areas. It wasn't a bad life. He had a family of sorts up in Heaven to replace the one he'd lost to being captured, and some scraps of influence and respect.  
  
After about fifteen minutes of walking and introspection, Julian found himself standing in front of what 'felt' like a building.  
  
And there was someone in it. A tight little knot of emotion... fear, mostly, with a bit of resignation and acceptance thrown in. An interesting combination, Julian reflected, someone who accepts the way things are and is terrified, but not by that. He entered the building, holding a hand out in front of him in case he had to open a door. "Hello?"  
  
No answer. "I'm a friend!" Julian said in the direction of the emotional bundle. "At least I'd like to be. I think."  
  
Still no answer, but the emotions twisted into confusion and frustration. Julian frowned, moving closer to the person, then bending down to what he hoped was about eye level. "Hey, you okay? Talk to me."  
  
A flash of quick anger, followed by more frustration. Julian cocked his head to one side, then laid his hands on the ground. "Touch my right hand for yes and my left hand for no," he instructed. "Do you understand?"  
  
A moment of curiosity, followed closely by apprehension, then the emotional equivalent of a shrug and a resigned, "What the hell, I'll do it." A light touch landed on Julian's right hand. "Hmmm," Julian thought, "a young hand, and a male mind... it's something, at least."  
  
"All right. Now we're getting somewhere." Julian kept his voice upbeat, friendly, and cheerful, which he could afford to do because the itch in his mind had apparently decided it had better things to do than mess with him and had disappeared. "Can you speak?"  
  
For a moment, consideration and a little relief, then a hesitant tap on Julian's right hand. Almost immediately, the relief metamorphosed back into frustration and the left hadn was tapped as well.  
  
"Well, which is it? Yes or no?"  
  
A moment, then a tap on both at the same time.  
  
"Yes *and* no. Well, you're certainly a font of nothing, my loquacious friend. Let's see... do you know who I am?"  
  
Instant confusion: the boy hadn't been expecting that question. Also, a resurgence of stricken fear for some reason, but there was a game tap on the left hand.  
  
"Name's Raguel. I work for a place called Heaven-" Julian broke off as the knot of emotion unwound itself into silent, comprehending laughter. A slight smile touched the blind boy's face. The silent kid was one of the first to understand or be amused by the joke of his street name. "A place called Heaven," he repeated after a moment, "that's up in the sky, for real . Now, I'm gonna level with you, kid, something about you's important. I was... I get hunches sometimes, and I just had one that led me to you."  
  
The laughter disappeared, replaced by the ever-present fear and a sort of cautious hope.  
  
Julian, encouraged, continued, "And since you're important, I think you probably need to be protected. I can... feel... how afraid you are, so if you want and if you think it's all right, I'll take you to Heaven. The boss's an okay guy, always willing to take in strays...."  
  
*****  
  
Dudley listened with only half an ear as the odd-looking boy calling himself Raguel continued speaking. On the one hand, he was only a year or two older than Dudley himself, judging from his voice and face. Too young to be the one he was hiding from. And he did see a bright place in the sky (too bright to be the moon) above the clouds at night sometimes, that could be this Heaven place.   
  
On the other, Dudley couldn't remember the last time he'd seen someone who looked as odd as this other did. Sunglasses in a dark room when it was going on towards sunset. Sandy blond hair that was clean (a rarity at best on the streets of London and in most cases an impossibility) and carefully braided, and loose clothes in grays and browns that would have been standard, unobtrusive street-wear if they'd been patched or worn at all. The almost-contradictions (street person and not) in Raguel made him leery of accepting any offer, no matter how nice it sounded.   
  
But he was tired of running all the time, and if Raguel was a killer, Dudley figured he'd have been dead by then. He reached out and tapped Raguel's right hand, mostly so that the other boy would shut up for a little while, wondering absently why the other hadn't merely asked him to nod or shake his head.  
  
Raguel stopped his chatter mid-sentence and beamed. "You agree? You'll come to Heaven with me?"  
  
Going to a place called Heaven with a weird guy named after an archangel. Why not? If he was going to be killed, it might as well be in that sort of style. He tapped the right hand again.  
  
"All right! No more visionary cattle prod!"  
  
Dudley frowned, trying to figure that out. After a moment, he shrugged and gave up. Sometimes, it just wasn't worth trying to understand some people. Raguel fumbled for a brief instant, then took Dudley's hand.  
  
"Right then, all you have to do is come along with me. It's not far." They began walking, away from Dudley's building and into a section of the city even more rundown. "I wish you talked, you know. It'd make things a lot easier. Like what am I supposed to call you if you can't tell me your name?"  
  
Dudley wanted to say that he wished he knew. He wanted to give Raguel *some* name to call him by, even if it wasn't his own. Which seemed fair, because Dudley was fairly sure Raguel wasn't his companion's real name either. But every time he opened his mouth to try and say something, the words just wouldn't come. Nothing had happened to his throat to take away the ability to speak... that he knew of... but all the same, he couldn't ay anything.  
  
"Well, don't worry about it," Raguel said cheerfully, once again exhibiting an eerie awareness of what Dudley was thinking in spite of the lack of speech. "I'll find a name for you, and if I don't, someone else will."  
  
Dudley shrugged as they walked into a building. A brown-haired girl wearing a white robe met them at the door. "Oh, Julian, it's you," she said, smiling at Dudley's companion. "You're back earlier than usual, aren't you?"  
  
"I usually just Apparate directly," Raguel said calmly in the direction of the girl's left shoulder. It was like a bomb going off in Dudley's brain; that was the reason for the hand-tap method of communication and the sunglasses in the dark! Raguel was blind! "I can't today, because as you see, I've got a passenger."  
  
The girl turned her attention to Dudley, wrinkling her nose. "He needs a bath, Julian. And some clean clothes. You're taking him up with you?"  
  
"I said I was, didn't I?" Raguel asked, a little too sweetly. "And Pansy dear, you know what they say. If you can't say something nice about someone, keep your mouth shut."  
  
The girl Pansy scowled. "Miss Clearwater's not gonna be happy with you, Julian. We've got enough staff."  
  
"Well, this one's special. Now, if you'll excuse us...."  
  
The girl flicked her hand irritably, muttering a phrase under her breath, and the dingy building dissolved around Dudley. His eyes went wide and he'd gripped Raguel's arm hard enough to begin to cut off circulation when scenery reformed around them, of a carpeted hallway, well-lit and cheerful-looking.  
  
"Welcome to Grace," announced Raguel. "This's where we all live, underneath Heaven proper. We just came up through the service entrance, as it were." He began leading Dudley through a complicated maze of passageways, eventually stopping in front of a door. "Now, oh silent one, this is my place. You go in there, take a bath, and put on one of those white robes you'll see hanging up... somewhere. Can't remember where, since I never wear the bloody things. I'll come back in about...." Raguel wrinkled his nose, considering. "An hour, and then we'll go see Penelope, find you a place of your own and a job to do and such."  
  
Dudley blinked, then shrugged. Whatever was happening, it hadn't been bad yet, and he was willing to go along with it for a while longer. And this place... Grace?... was really very nice, better than any other place Dudley'd been in in his life. He went into the flat, and heard the door shut and lock behind him.  
  
It was well-furnished, a little bare by Heaven's standards and the lap of luxury by Dudley's. It wasn't lit very well, but Dudley counted himself as lucky it was lit at all, since the person who lived in it really didn't need light. A courtesy to guests? Maybe. There was a main room, which combined kitchen, dining room, and living room together in one, a bedroom, and a bathroom.   
  
True to his instructions, Dudley took a bath and made sure he got as much dirt and grime off him as he possibly could. While he washed, he did some thinking. With all the talk about Apparation between Raguel and that Pansy girl, it was obvious that they both had magic. A wizard and a witch... he was uncomfortably reminded of his mother's dying words for the first time since leaving the house. *Lily...! My sister... one of Them....*  
  
'Them' in Dudley's childhood had always meant wizards and witches. So his mother's sister... no, his Aunt Lily was a witch. Or had been a witch. Did that mean he still had family out there somewhere? This Aunt Lily, maybe? Dudley resolved to begin trying to find out somehow, although precisely how escaped him.  
  
As soon as he was as clean as one bath would make him, which took about forty-five minutes, Dudley dried himself off and squirmed into one of the white robes Raguel had mentioned. It was too big for him, even though Raguel was not a particularly large person, but it would do. To finish off the look, he fished the broken-toothed comb out of his bag and began picking it through his hair to try and get rid of some of the more major tangles.  
  
Raguel was late, so Dudley had nearly finished combing out his hair by the time he got back. "You set?" the blind boy asked, breezing in the door.  
  
Dudley nodded, then stopped, feeling foolish. How did someone who couldn't speak communicate with someone who couldn't see?  
  
"Well, if you are, follow me." Raguel left, and Dudley scrambled after, tripping on the hem of the too-big white robe. "It's a few hours yet to opening, so Penelope has a few minutes to see you before she has to get to real work. We're going to meet her in one of the rehearsal rooms."  
  
The rehearsal room was plain, closer to what Dudley had been used to at the Place; bare floor, chairs in an attentive position, a few music stands. And in the center of the room... a piano.  
  
That caught Dudley's attention immediately. He walked over to it, ran one hand along the keys, careful not to hit any of them. The piano was slightly different than Antoinette had been, of course, less worn, black, and without the candles dripping wax down the front. After a moment, he gave in to the temptation and seated himself in fornt of the piano and began to play, starting with warming up exercises (it had been over six years, after all) and eventually going into a heartfelt round of "Ode to Joy".  
  
Dudley was so engrossed in the music that he didn't notice the young woman in the maroon robes come in and talk to Raguel, didn't notice the surprised expression on her face. He didn't see when the woman left, only to return a moment later with a beautiful girl who looked near to tears at the sound of the piano being played.  
  
As he played, Dudley remembered Louisa and Emil, his parents and the others at the house, Marshall and Piers and the other members of the Celestial Chorus, and smiled for the first time since he'd left all of them behind him. Without thinking about it, he began playing the Hallelujah Chorus, one of the first pieces of really classical music Emil had ever taught him, and didn't notice when the throaty alto of the beautiful girl started singing along. *I think I'll call you Celeste,* he thought to the piano.  
  
Home at last.  
  
  
  



	3. Come Into My Parlor

Continuity: This story takes place sometime before Alternity 1.   
  
Alternity Interlude: Come Into My Parlor  
by Slytherin Dragon  
  
***Day 1***   
  
As ordered, I begin my first overseas mission for the Agency, starting with a sea voyage that will likely last until at least the end of the month. It'll be the first of many such voyages, I think; it's a good thing I don't get seasick. Even when I'm tempted to. I've decided to keep this journal, partly because it's something to do and partly because once I get back home to Sydney I want to be able to write a very detailed report, and so will need the facts and observations I will write here.   
  
I'm having second thoughts about this ship. It's a complete rust bucket; back home in Australia it'd be long overdue to be scrapped. It's a testament to the skill of this crew that this thing runs at all, I think.   
  
We're heading, I'm told, in the direction of a small port town in Spain. Apparently it doesn't have a name, or at least I haven't heard one. It's far enough off the beaten path not to attract notice, said the captain when I asked why Spain and why not somewhere closer to what's left of the European commercial hub. Far enough away that He won't see us.   
  
Does he think Voldemort can see everything everywhere, that he's an omniscient, omnipresent Eye, like Sauron in Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'? I asked the captain that, laughing.   
  
Yes, he said solemnly. Just exactly like that.   
  
***Day 2***   
  
If other days are as boring as this one, I will confine myself to writing only about interesting days in order to conserve space in my journal. I'll also resolve to never, ever take another fact-finding mission as long as I live. The only interesting thing that happened today was that I go to know my shipmates a little better and came to a single, solitary conclusion.   
  
Everyone on this ship is completely insane.   
  
With everyone I speak to, it's magic this and wizards that and hey look there's an owl. Even where Voldemort doesn't rule, he holds people in thrall with his sleight of hand and superstition.   
  
He looks like he knows what he's doing, I'll grant him that much. But how much stability can you expect from a man who believes in magic?   
  
For posterity, since I may not get a chance later, and since you never know when something will kick you in the head and give you total amnesia, I suppose I ought to introduce myself. I failed to do so in my previous entry. If this were my official report, I'd have to apologize and a black mark would undoubtedly be added to my file by some pencil-pusher who's late for dinner or something. Thankfully this is just an informal journal rather than an official log.   
  
My name is Solomon Kincaid. My friends (those lucky few) call me Sol, except for one who's an astronomer who calls me Sunny. I don't get the joke, but it amuses her no end. If someone were to pull my dossier at the Agency, they'd see that there's a photo of a bunch of Agents in a group, not a photo just of me. For security, I think, or maybe the government's just cheap. Who knows?   
  
Wave hello! I'm the tallish one in the third row with the curly mop of black hair. Darkish skin, dark eyes. I suppose I'm just scruffy enough not to stick out like a sore thumb in that madman's Europe and just professional enough to get field assignments instead of backwater surveillance ops. I left Australia, home sweet home, on this wonderful mission, leaving instructions to my parents not to worry and to my sister-in-law not to let the cat drown itself trying to get at my goldfish. Instructions to me from the Agency were as follows:   
Go to Europe. Watch, listen, analyze the threat level, and report back what you find.   
  
Yes, I know I probably shouldn't have recorded it, but let's face facts, shall we? I have a remarkably low pain tolerance; if an interrogator so much as *showed* me a red-hot poker I'd sing like Edith Piaf.   
  
Anyway, it's an easy op, right? Right, and therefore not one that screams promotion unless I really wow the guys back at home with some vital information. So I left Australia three weeks ago and arrived somewhere in north Africa about two weeks later. That's a week ago for people (including myself) who got lost in that last sentence. It was dry, dusty, and a week was far too long to stay there. I'm happy to be gone, even if it has to be on this derelict asylum.   
  
I'm told that in about a fortnight we'll be putting into port in Spain, and then my real work will begin.   
  
***Day 12***   
  
I've not written in this journal because nothing's really happened. I've gotten a little sick of the constant harping about magic and wizards on board. I grew out of fairy tales a long time ago! I'm part Aborigine, for crying out loud, like I told the first mate this morning. They were and still are a very mystical people. If magic was real, don't you think I'd know?   
  
Maybe, she said, and smiled. I know she only said that to shut me up, but she has a very pretty smile, so I don't mind. Even white teeth that look whiter next to skin darker even than mine. Nice... her name's Naomi. Naomi Sulaweyo.   
  
She's pretty and really quite nice, but she's as crazed as everyone else on board. Carries a stick of oak around everywhere with her. She waves it around and occasionally hits things (and crewmembers if they're not fast enough for her) with it. But I figure everyone's entitled to their quirks, especially pretty girls, so I don't ask about the stick. It's her business, not mine.   
  
***Day14***   
  
We had a storm today, early this morning. It blew up out of nowhere and started pounding   
the ship like there was no tomorrow. I was out on deck during, helping the crew out as best I could. What the hell, I thought, this piece of junk's probably going down anyway, so I might as well die busy. There was no way it should have been able to survive that beating.   
Most of the crew seemed to be in line with my thoughts, going about their assigned duties silent and blank-faced, like zombies. The captain himself took the tiller while Naomi stood in the middle of the deck, yelling at the storm in a some other language and waving her stick.   
Great, I wanted to say. That'll really help; you think that maybe you're going to scare the storm away or what? I didn't say anything, though… Naomi doesn't smile much when she's angry enough to spit nails.   
  
It blew over quickly, I guess because it's not the storm season or maybe it was just a very small system. But all the same I was surprised we were still afloat and said as much to   
Naomi.   
  
Maybe it was magic, she said lightly, twirling her stick.   
  
Magic! I scoffed. You think everything's magic! Let me tell you, any idiot with quick hands could pull a rabbit out of a hat, and that's the extent of 'magic'. There's nothing mystical about it.   
  
But could they pull a hat from a rabbit? she asked.   
  
I didn't see the relevance of the question, so I turned away to face the distant shoreline of Spain. I guess we were just lucky, then, I told her.   
  
Maybe, she said, and smiled.   
  
***Day 15***   
  
Into port and on with the mission! I said my goodbyes to the captain (who seemed glad to be rid of me, I can't see why), to the crew (who ignored me; how rude is that?), and to Naomi, who smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and wished me luck with my mission. I haven't decided whether or not she was making fun of me yet.   
  
The little town was almost as dingy and run-down as the ship was, and no one wanted to talk, so I didn't linger. I bought a horse with some of the oddly shaped coins the Agency had given me and rode out, heading north towards France.   
  
There's definitely a certain security in my somewhat jumbled appearance that one of the more clean-cut Agents simply wouldn't have. In loose, shabby gray and brown clothes and with my hair hanging in my eyes, I look like just another vagrant. Not someone anyone will pay attention to unless I go out of my way to cause a scene.   
  
Just passing through, don't mind me, I can say, and people believe me.   
  
***Day 20***   
  
I think I've crossed the border into France, but honestly everything looks exactly the same. Same squalid little villages, same overfarmed fields, same blank-faced people working them, same empty stares whenever I try to conduct a conversation. I'm not really *that* socially repulsive, am I?   
  
I have seen no evidence of "magic" beyond that which can be done with resources, ruthlessness, and a little bit of creative propaganda. Villagers all but grovel when someone with a stick walks by; I do the same so as not to be conspicuous, but it makes me want to throw up. I mean, I could carry around a stick if I wanted to; then would these silly people grovel at me?   
  
Probably. They're well and truly broken from what I've seen. By people with sticks.   
Is there really a threat here?   
  
***Day 22***   
  
Is this Paris?! I almost don't believe it, the City of Light destroyed. But then I saw the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower in the middle of this sorry place, standing there like a skeleton, and I knew. The city of Paris is in ruins, its history in art and monuments destroyed. People as blank-faced as the sailors on the ship from Africa or the farmers in Spain shamble around the streets like lost kittens, finding warmth and comfort (temporarily and for a price) with girls and women who huddle together on corners and whisper to each other.   
  
I was a history and literature major before I became an Agent and went into service to my country, and I can't communicate how personally I take this and how this desolation affects me. It's like... well, maybe it's like knowing your sister was raped and seeing the bruises on her face and the broken bones. I wouldn't know about that, but what I do know is that Paris was one of the most beautiful cities on the world and now it's little more than a junkpile and heap of rocks.   
  
There's a tribe of feral cats living among the shards of the Arc de Triomphe, and l'Opéra is home to two or three street gangs known for their glass knives and crystal arrowheads. Notre Dame, the great cathedral, is now a shelter and makeshift morgue; people go there when they have nowhere else to go or when they're bleeding to death,   
  
There's nothing to see here and no threat I can find. These people have no hope and no spirit. Like Spain....   
  
***Day 23***   
  
I've still seen no "magic", but of this Voldemort's power there is no denial. He holds Europe and most of Africa, and as far as I can tell, he has only ever launched one attack when he decides to conquer something. One attack for England, one for France, one for Spain, and so on, and their defenses just crumble to nothing in front of him.   
  
What sort of weapons does he have, I wonder, that can destroy cities and break people's spirits so thoroughly and leave nothing behind but the destruction. No marks, no charring, no cinders… just ruins that are almost picturesque in how perfectly they've been broken.   
There's still farmland and I've seen no signs of radiation poisoning, so I don't think he's using nuclear weapons, thank God. All conventional weapons I know of would leave marks, as mentioned previously. I've found none of the signs here and believe me I am looking.   
Whatever weapons Europe's Dark Lord has, they're not like any weapons we've ever seen before.   
  
***Day 25***   
  
I left Paris today, heading north and west towards the English Channel. I still haven't found any physical evidence of any weapons capable of destroying cities, but I've decided to go to London. Right into the lion's mouth, as it were; I think I'll find my answers there.   
  
I am accompanied by the horse I bought in Spain and by one of the Arc de Triomphe's feral tomcats who decided he liked me. He's a scarred, muscley sort of animal, and I've taken to calling him Bonaparte, in remembrance of the man who ordered the construction of the memorial where this cat made its home.   
  
I pushed the horse and Bonaparte's patience and managed to cover about half the distance to the nearest port on the Bretagne peninsula today. In two days... that is, day after tomorrow, I should be crossing the Channel.   
  
Hopefully by then the scratches will have started to heal.   
  
***Day 27***   
  
I feel like I've stepped into someone else's world. The ship I'm on now is in even worse condition than the ship from Africa, and it's not even mechanical… at least, not anymore. There's a makeshift mast with a patched sail in the middle of it, but the real moving power comes from rowers kept belowdecks. Everyone on this ship, except the captain and the few other travelers I have fallen in with, are the blank-faced zombies I am rapidly becoming accustomed to seeing everywhere. Numb, uncaring… they just work, eat, and sleep in a kind of tired, eerie silence.   
  
I joined the group of travelers just before we left port. I decided that one of a group was less conspicuous than one alone, and they were going to London anyway. It's a mixed group: men, women, and children going to work in London. Well, that's fine. So am I, after a fashion.   
  
Everything about this Voldemort character confuses me; he's like a living contradiction. On the one hand, he obviously possesses weapons and technology on an entirely different level than ours back home in Australia. On the other, his administration seems almost pathologically anti-technology and anti-science. Sails and oars over motors, horses instead of cars, trained birds instead of a postal service.   
  
None of my traveling companions seem to read or write; I tried to strike up a conversation about books and received only blank stares. Accordingly, I've fashioned a small pocket in the interior lining of my coat to hide this journal in. If my 'peers' don't read, I can't be seen to either or risk attracting attention to myself.   
  
***Day 28***   
  
London is like Paris in most places, crumbling and ruined. A few neighborhoods are still scrupulously well-kept and neat, which only makes the rest of the rest of the city look worse. I assume that these neighborhoods are where the government officials live, mostly because it's the stuff horror movies are made of to have zombies shambling around in someone's flowerbeds, you know?   
  
I am now alone again as far as animal companionship; I had to sell the horse to pay passage across the Channel (and I think I got taken, what's more), and Bonaparte took off the second we put into port. Maybe he had family here or something; I don't know.   
  
I stayed with the group, since there didn't seem to be a convenient time to leave them, and we're currently in some kind of communal housing, waiting to be given jobs or whatever happens now. I'm not worried about any sort of danger, everyone else seems perfectly calm.   
London doesn't have quite the feel of despair or hopelessness Paris did, but it's... I don't know... bleaker, somehow. Darker. Even a brightly lit room seems shadowed. I am not generally a believer in the atmosphere of a place, but London is rapidly changing that.   
One interesting thing was the construct in the sky I saw just before nightfall, after we were all herded inside, making a lazy circle around the city. What's that, I asked one of my companions, a tired and old-looking mother of two little girls.   
  
Heaven, she answered, and told me to go to sleep.   
  
Heaven? It just goes to show how far these people have regressed, to assign religious significance to that thing. I think it's probably a surveillance drone of some kind, judging from how it circles around the city without stopping. Big Brother is watching, in a big way.   
  
It's comforting to finally see some evidence of the technology I knew was around here somewhere, you know? The absence of any kind of advanced machinery from daily life had me remembering Naomi and her stick, and everyone's childish insistences about magic. Even though it means I'll have to be doubly cautious about not causing disturbances, at least I'm not losing my mind.   
  
***Day 30***   
  
Short. Can I keep this short? They could come and see me, or they could hear. They can do anything, I know it. I know it. It's dark where I am now, I've been locked away.   
No, can't keep it short. I have to do something even if it's useless busywork. I can't see my handwriting and that's probably a good thing; my hands are shaking so badly I could be rented to mix paint. I can't keep this short. I need to get this out. I need to, because later I could be dead.   
  
I didn't do anything, I swear I didn't do anything. I can't have! I don't believe in... don't believe...   
  
Deep breaths. Calm. Remember, this is for the promotion. The promotion. Home. Mom, Dad, sister, goldfish, drowned cat. For them too. I'd even be happy with that sorry Spanish nag or scarred Bonaparte.   
  
Sticks and robes and zombies in the streets, why didn't I see it before? No technology, no nothing. No, I had to close my ears and eyes and believe in some sort of weapon like the ones I've always known.   
  
It's all real. God help me, it's all real. Magic and messenger owls and wizards, every last word I've been hearing since Africa. I could have turned around then. I could have gone home and been a laughingstock. Solomon Kincaid believes in magic! No, couldn't be, not good old solid Sol!   
  
It is. I do. I have to, now. There's no going back, now or ever. I killed someone. I killed one of Them. Me, the literature student. Me, the history buff. Me, the one who picked spiders up and put them outside instead of squashing them. I killed someone.   
  
I didn't mean to... God knows I didn't mean to. I don't even know how I did it. We (my group and I) were all lined up, and two guys in robes with st... two wizards were going slowly down the line, waving their st... wands at us. Everyone else was calm, everyone else was collected. One of the little kids was told to go sit by the door.   
  
I was angry and confused. I didn't know what was going on, didn't know if my cover'd be blown. I wanted to demand why I hadn't been told that two men with sticks were going to take a poke at me. Some shred of common sense stopped me from doing that, but it didn't save me from what happened next.   
  
When they got to me, everything went wrong. The one waving his wand at me just slammed backwards into a wall, and his wand flew straight up and lodged in the ceiling. He sort of slid down the wall, and the first thing I wondered was why he was holding his head like that. It couldn't possibly have been comfortable.   
  
His neck was snapped. Instant death, but thankfully no blood. I can't take blood. At first I didn't know what happened, but suddenly I couldn't move, not an inch to save my life. The second wizard seemed to tower over me, and my anger completely left me. Christ, I thought, he thinks I killed that man!   
  
What did you do, Wizard Number Two asked me.   
  
I didn't do anything, I answered. I didn't. You have to believe me. I didn't.   
  
Abruptly I was on fire, or at least it felt that way. I see, said the other, so he just decided to break his own neck, did he? I wanted to shake my head, wanted to scream, wanted to say something, but I still couldn't. The wizard shook his head as though he were sorry. I don't know where you escaped from, he told me, but you're going to the nearest zone until we decide what to do with you.   
  
So here I am, sitting in the dark, wondering what'll happen to me next and when the rats will come for my toes.   
  
***Some day***   
  
I've lost track of time. There's no window here, and the hole is completely dark. Once in a while I get 'fed', and a couple times people came in to look at me and whisper amongst themselves. Never alone, though.   
  
I think they're afraid of me. I really do.   
  
Will wonders never cease?   
  
***Entry***   
  
I have more or less given up on time as such. If I'm not dead, I'm not interested. Does this happen to everyone who gets stuffed in a dark hole? I don't even want to see what I look like after all this time. Stick me in a Rasta hat and I bet I could pass for a reggae singer.   
  
Anyway, I had visitors today. Not too uncommon, of course, but these ones talked to me, not over me and to each other. Wanted to know whether I was sorry for what I'd done. Whether I'd behave properly and keep my place. I answered that I didn't know what they were talking about, as of course I don't. My *place*? I'm a person, not some pet or whatever.   
  
Four people; I'm so used to the dark that I couldn't see what they looked like, but I'd be willing to bet that at least two of the voices belong to kids... teenagers, most likely.   
  
Psychotic country, using kids as jailers. I want to go home.   
  
***Entry***   
  
They came back, those two kids. What am I, a zoo exhibit?   
  
One of them wasn't too happy to be there, although I can't tell whether it was because he was angry or scared. He sounded both. The other, the taller one, sounded as though he were enjoying himself. I got a look at them, though, just a quick glance. One had dark hair almost as messy as mine on a good day, and the other seemed nearly white.  
  
They didn't talk to me, just to each other in very quiet voices. For some reason, I don't think that whatever they were talking about will be at all good for me.   
  
***Entry***   
  
Been a while since my last entry. Too much has been happening, and I haven't gotten a chance to record.   
  
Can you believe it? Those kids... those two kids I talked about before... they let me out. Just came one... I think it was night... and let me out. One of them (the taller one, the relaxed one) opened the door and out of nowhere announced that I was free to go.   
  
Psychotic country. Kids as jailers letting prisoners and murderers go. Not that I'm not grateful or anything, mind.   
  
I left, of course... I hadn't had free movement in days, if not weeks, and I figured that even if they hunted me down again, I desperately needed the exercise. I wasn't sure where to go, but cities always have places to hide in. Especially ruined cities; fallen buildings make for great cover, I've found.   
  
I got a look at myself just this morning. I found a broken mirror in the place I was staying, and succumbed to the masochistic urge to take a look at myself. I've never been exactly neat-looking. In fact, my appearance is usually best decribed as "scruffy", but now I'm probably well into the realm of "disgustingly unhygienic-looking". I'd grown a beard which possibly would be flattering if it wasn't tangled and matted, and if I were absolutely sure there weren't things living in it. I shaved it off with a shard of mirror, and now the lower half of my face is a mass of cuts.   
  
Note to self: mirrors do not make good razors.   
  
As I suspected earlier, my hair has grown out, so that instead of a short, moplike mass of curls, I have a long, moplike mass of curls that I constantly have to shove out of my face. I suppose I'm lucky that I've escaped dreadlocks, but as things stand right now, I either find some way to tie my hair back or some kind of headband, or I go around looking like Cousin It after a perm.   
  
I'm thinner, of course, but that's to be expected. All in all, I wasn't nearly as badly off as I'd thought, appearance-wise.   
  
I like this place. It's mostly got a roof, I've got my broken mirror, and thanks to strategic positioning of rubble (there is a God) I will see anyone on the street long before they see me. I think I'll stay here for a while.   
  
***Entry***   
  
Ah, monotony. When it had to grace my life, did I really have to be a bum in London in dire need of a haircut? Why couldn't monotony hit me when I'm 65, retired, and fabulously wealthy from my previous position as head of the Agency? Life isn't fair.   
  
I get up in the morning and shave using my handy broken mirror. I've been cutting myself   
less and less, but thanks to a memorable incident two days ago, I have a fairly large slash on the left side of my face. Lucky I had my eyes closed, or I'd have one less working eye. My mirror tells me that when this is healed it'll be either a dashing scar or I'll just look like some jerk who accidently sliced open his face while shaving. I then go scrounge for food, which takes pretty much the day, then I go back to my little hidey-hole and sleep. All my days are the same. Monotony.   
  
I've tried a couple times since my escape to do little magics, since I found out quite violently that I can, but it never works. I'm beginning to think that that was either a one-time deal, or it only works when it chooses to.   
  
I'm hoping that doesn't mean I'll be throwing people into walls every time my little talent kicks in. That would get me in a lot of trouble really quickly. And I've been in enough trouble, thank you.   
  
It still feels odd, thinking this way about things. I think about magic and wizards and what will happen to me if they find me again. Then this little voice in my head calls me an idiot and says that magic doesn't exist. It does. I've seen it. I've even done it. But that still doesn't stop the little voice, which sounds suspiciously like my sister-in-law.   
  
I still want to go home... at least I think I do. Part of what I wonder is whether I'd even be allowed to come back. The other part is whether I want to go home because I miss it or because I'm beginning to forget it.   
  
It's sort of like a dream, you know? I remember my family, my fish, my job, but it's like all that happened to someone else. I've been in prison, I've killed someone, I look like Cousin It during his rebellious teenage years when he discovered the wonders of the curling iron. Or maybe it's Cousin It while he was hero-worshipping Shirley Temple, I don't know. I can't really make that parallel with the well-trained, professional Agent that I like to think I was.   
  
Well... I was well-trained anyway.   
  
***Entry***   
  
Ha! My friends do not desert me, I command loyalty! Well... sort of.   
  
Bonaparte the cat made his return appearance today, and wherever he was, he picked up the rather interesting ability to jump on my shoulder, sit there, and stay there no matter what I do. And he's a *big* cat, so he looks more than a little out of place up there.   
  
I don't mind. He brought me a dead rat (which I promptly buried, I'm not so starved as all that) when he arrived, and promptly curled up in the pile of cloth scraps I've been using as a bed and took a nap. It's nice to have company, I suppose, but I do have to wonder how the beast found me. It's not like I left a forwarding address with the post office or anything.   
  
It's kind of nice to have company. I showed Bonaparte the slash on my face, and he seemed marginally impressed. At least, he felt the need to "clean" it, which was painful enough to make me give him a hard shove away. I apologized immediately and scratched him behind the ears, but I'm not sure he forgave me. I can almost hear him protesting that he was only trying to help....   
  
***Entry***   
  
I don't feel so good... my face feels like I stuck it in a barbecue grill. I couldn't get out of my little rag pile to go scrounging, since the minute I sat up the world took it into its head to spin around and around. I'm not really hungry anyway.   
  
I'm fine as long as I don't get up, I think... spoke too soon. There it goes again with the spinning.   
  
Bonaparte has taken to licking at my face again, but this time I didn't really feel it. I mean, what's a cat's tongue compared to a flaming hot grill?   
  
Speaking of flame, I didn't remember it being so warm   
  
***Entry***   
  
I'm better now. It's been, I'm told, about a week since I took my little fever-nap. Bonaparte is quite the intelligent feline... I'm lucky he eventually forgave me for shoving him that one time. Apparently, when he couldn't get me to do something after I... left, he went out looking for help. Or something.   
  
And he found help, in the form of someone who is, quite possibly, even odder than me. He's not much of a healer, so I will indeed have a very prominent scar down the left side of my face, but hey, I'm not dead.   
  
The person Bonaparte found calls himself Raguel... I'm almost certain that isn't really his name. Aside from the dubious distinction that if he unbraided his hair he might look even more like Cousin It than I do, he has a habit of talking to the vicinity of one or the other of my shoulders. I hope it's because he's blind and not because he thinks my shoulders do my talking for me.   
  
I don't mind his company, really; it's the first fully-present conversation I've had since Naomi. But I wish he weren't such a gossip. He chatters on and on interminably about everything he hears when he's wandering around. Some of it's interesting, some of it's not. Rumors of resistance groups, which gangs have changed territory, even who's currently allied with whom in Voldemort's political circle.   
  
I know I should be listening and noting down what he says, but I think Raguel's a crackpot. No one can know that much and have it all be true except possibly God, not on these streets. Most especially not blind teenagers who follow cats around. All the same, I gossip back, let him know what little I pick up while I scrounge.   
  
I mean, *some* of what he says is useful. Easy pickings for scrounging, or, if one has enough energy, a housebreak target or two. And knowing which parts of the city to avoid is certainly helpful. So I'm willing to listen to the rest of his chatter, since it helps me out.   
Most of the time I think he's talking to himself. It's like he hears something on the streets and then has to repeat it a certain number of times before it's stuck in his mind. He can't exactly write it down, one of the many and myriad disadvantages of not being able to see, and even if he could, he couldn't read it later. So he uses me to help him memorize.   
  
I wonder if he tells the next person he talks to the things I tell him?   
  
***Entry***   
  
Raguel came by again today; it's getting to be a habit. This time, though, he was less talky and more serious. They're looking for you, he told me, thay say you killed someone.   
  
I did, I answered, but it wasn't my fault.   
  
You think they care, he asked. Look, I know some people, you can stay with them until this blows over.   
  
I guess he takes perceived responsibilities seriously. He kept me from dying when my face got infected, so he wasn't about to let me die because I get caught by Voldemort's goons. I appreciate that, I told him in reponse to his offer. Part of me was wondering what his angle was; nice chatty blind guy didn't quite cover it for me. The other part was remembering that pit of a cell I'd been in and swearing never to go back.   
  
He nodded and turned to leave, beckoning over his shoulder with one hand. Follow me.   
  
I did, Bonaparte riding on my shoulder. We wandered aimlessly through the streets (well, aimlessly to me, anyway) until we came to a completely destroyed building. Raguel picked through the debris, carefully and exaggeratedly weaving a path into a darkened overhang. I followed, wondering how "friends" could fit into such a small space.   
  
It turned out there was a staircase going down. It wasn't lit, so I nearly fell down the stairs before realizing they were there. The building had apparently had a basement that didn't get destroyed when the rest of it did.   
  
We'd descended maybe ten steps when I saw a light ahead. A light and a doorway. I forced myself not to hurry towards the light; my experience in days or weeks of total darkness has left me... not exactly afraid of the dark, but I don't really like it.   
  
You know someone down here, I think, Raguel said in a conversational tone. At least she says she knows you.   
  
I didn't get a chance to respond, since we'd arrived at the doorway. On the other side of that door was a dream come true.   
  
It was almost like home. It was a library... an honest-to-God library. Okay, most of the books were ripped or singed, but they were on the shelves and looked well cared-for. A few tables and lopsided chairs completed the look. Welcome to the Invisible College, Raguel proclaimed. Just a little piece of the past underneath hell, so to speak. He laughed.   
  
Just like you to drag in strays everywhere you go, Raguel, a female voice said from the staircase behind us. Has Lockhart stopped accepting yours?   
  
You wound me! Raguel laughed. I just thought you'd like this one better than the boss man would.  
  
I recognized the woman's voice. First Bonaparte, then.... I'm dreaming, I said. Naomi?   
  
She walked around in front of me and it really was her, dark skin and beautiful white smile. Well, if it isn't the secret agent man, she said, laughing. So do you believe in magic now, Mr. Kincaid?   
  
It's Sol, I told her, grinning. And maybe I do.   
  
***Final Entry***   
  
I've settled into life at the Invisible College, which basically consists of that smallish library belowstairs and a few other people who spend their time either digging through ashes looking for more books or raiding buildings for the same reason.   
  
Naomi and I have settled into a partnership of sorts, along with Bonaparte the cat, who has decided Naomi's shoulder is as good as mine. We hit the streets together, usually in the Diagon Alley area. She talks to people and I snoop around. Generally speaking I can nab something while Naomi's providing a distraction. Raguel hangs out in Diagon Alley a lot, too, so even if I can't grab something, I can trade gossip.   
  
That, I've found, is our sole purpose. We collect books and gossip. I don't know why. And I don't know where we'll put them when we run out of space or what the point is of knowing who just got executed and for what.   
  
Raguel drops by the library itself once in a while, mostly picking up a book or two and returning others. What use they are to a blind guy is something I've yet to determine.   
Life isn't monotonous anymore. I'm still working on getting a few tricks to work. I don't have a wand, so it's difficult in the extreme, but I keep trying. I have work to do, maybe not important work, but there's Naomi too, so I'm happy enough.   
  
I'll be putting away this journal after I've finished this section. I'll file it on a shelf with the other books, and maybe someone will read it someday. Or maybe someday a ship will come into port from Spain or Africa carrying another starry-eyed Agent, and I'll be able to meet them at port with this book.   
  
Maybe they'll flip to nearly the end of it and scoff at me. You don't *really* believe in this magic thing, do you?   
  
Maybe, I'll say, and smile.   
  
~Finis~  
  



End file.
